Dia Cha's story is shared by many Hmong Americans who made a long journey to freedom. The story cloth stiched by her aunt and uncle describes the Hmong people's long and dangerous journey. For Hmong people, story cloths are a bridge between past and present. For all Americans, Dia's Story Cloth is a universal story of the search for freedom.
In 2000, the Minnesota Humanities Center (then the Humanities Commission) and its curriculum-based family literacy program, Motheread.Fatheread, embarked on a Hmong Translation Initiative. The purpose of the initiative was to create bilingual editions of classic childrens books to help Hmong families develop literacy skills in their first language as well as in English.
Although these translations are no longer in print, they can be found in many places on the internet. Clicking on the books below will take you to Amazon.com where most used copies can be found for reasonable prices. If you are looking for other bilingual books,
www.languagelizard.com can be a helpful website.
Because of the Moob Ntsuab (Green Mong) and Hmoob Dawb (White Hmong) dialects are different, the translation committee has translated the English text into both. The Hmong text is featured next to the English, and the book’s original artwork is maintained.